CNN's Lou Dobbs, "When voters lose confidence in our elected representatives, we can vote the bums out. But what is the recourse if American voters lose confidence in our electoral system?" / Pima Co. Arizona had 4 DRE and 3 Optical-scan machines turned in with evidence of tampering with security seals. This was election night. What do they do now, ignore the votes in the machines? Ignore the security issues? / Montgomery Co. Maryland has 10 to 12 thousand provisional ballots to count due to their voting problems. It will be next week before final results can be announced. / Voters who do not want to use e-voting machines in the Netherlands can get a voting pass and go to a municipality that allows voting with a paper ballot and pencil. This right has sparked a whole new industry called, "Voting Tourism". ...

**"Daily Voting News" is meant as a comprehensive listing of reports each day concerning issues related to election and voting news around the country regardless of quality or political slant. Therefore, items listed in "Daily Voting News" may not reflect the opinions of VotersUnite.Org or BradBlog.Com**

I'll thank Dobbs for reporting this, but I don't think I can ever forgive him for the way he treated the 2004 election, and his love for the minute men. I don't trust Dobbs he lost my trust years ago. I am glad he is reporting this though. Dobbs earned 1 good mark now 99 more to go before he earns my full trust in what he says.

I have a theory that soon we will see a morphing of "the war on terror" to include "the war on drugs." They will use the tactic of depersonification of "drug users and dealers" much like that currently with "terrorists." Soon after there will be little if no differentiation between them, possibly even including the drug user/dealers under the umbrella of "terrorists"

"They are terrorizing our youth with the scourge of drugs"
"Our two most urgent problems are drugs and terrorists"
"Why should we treat the drug user/dealers any different than the terrorists? They are both attemting to destroy the US"

You know, shit like that. It is at this point that the searches without a warrant of any kind will be "OK" because "the drug terrorizers are so dangerous to our country," even though the statistics show relatively small percentages of drug use (when you reasonably do not include marijuana, which they very well may)
Then they will start putting all the "activists" in jails, prisons, camps, whatevever, on drug charges. No one will say anything, even though the number of people will far exceed the percentage of drug user/dealers that has historically and consistantly been found. When people do finally catch on, and push back, it will be a hop, skip, and a jump to go to full blown martial law, dictatorship, etc.

I don't like this story, it sucks.
Please don't let it be true. Pay attention.

P.S. Am I crazy or did the Republicans vote in the Cannon bill today that would have the effect that if the Attorney General OK's a surveilance program, even if it is found to be illegal by a court, it will be impossible to force the companies that facilitate it to stop? Didn't Nadler try to add an amendment merely trying to allow a court to tell them to knock it off if the program is illegal, AND THE REPUBLICANS ALL VOTED IT DOWN. WHY???? Fuck that made me mad. I was fuming.

If you care about preventing this from happening, continuing to speak up now is exactly what you should be doing. I should point out that it is very easy to neutralize a single activist, but very hard to stop a movement. There are many of us out here already, and more all the time, who have medical recommendations for cannabis, who use cannabis sacramentally for religious purposes, and who can speak openly of how it has helped to improve our lives.

But it's a lot easier to take a stand like this when you're on friendly ground like Berkeley than when you are in Peoria or Pittsburgh.

There is NO, NONE, NADA, connection of violence to marijuana, except of course, that drug laws inflate the price and MONEY gets involved. Alcohol, (the legal drug), IS often connected with violence regardless of cost. Go to the left side of the page on the alcohol information section of the "Parents, The Anti-Drug" campaign webstie and click on "Drugs & Violence". WOW, THAT'S HEAVY MAN!

The deliberate connection of marijuana to terrorism has been going on since before terrorism had a name. This effort was kicked into ultra high gear, to say the least, the day George W. Bush "took" office. Remember, long long ago, when the television ads were making the case that when you buy drugs like marijuana, you're supporting the terrorists and Arianna Huffington countered with her ads showing when you fill up your SUV, you're supporting terrorists. The Anti-drug website is a remnant of that campaign that Arianna forced off the air using the truth.

Obviously, the heroin coming from Afganistan is financing the war of terror that Bush propelled into fruition, so why focus on marijuana. Because Bush and Gonzales see a much bigger threat from angry potheads then from people "chilling" on alcohol, heroin, coke, or any of the other truly dangerous and addictive drugs.

Nixon ignored a study he had commissioned about marijuana which stated criminalization of it would be much more harmful then the drug itself, (ya think?). He was worried that the Jews were up to something.

George Bush's dad, saw financial opportunities such as those created by alcohol prohibition, and Bush Jr. sees powerful tyrany, subjugation and torture as a pastime.

But if you're not doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about!

AL: "There's a great difference between alcohol and marijuana."
RN: "What is it?"
AL: "The worst that you can have when you're in with other alcoholics is more to drink, so you'll throw up more and get sicker and be drunker."
RN: "And that also is a great, great incentive, uh..."
AL: "But when you are with druggers, you can go from marijuana, to say heroin. Big difference."
RN: "I see."
AL: "If, if, if you're with a guy who suggests you have three more drinks than you should have, you're just going to get sicker. But if you're with a guy who you're already high and he suggests you try, this instead of this, you can go much further."

Later on in the same conversation, Nixon finally seems to grasp the strange double-think between drinking to "have fun" and toking to "get high."

AL: When people smoke marijuana, they smoke it to get high, in every case. When most people drink, they drink to be sociable. You don't see people..."
RN: "That's right, that's right."
AL: "They sit down with a marijuana cigarette to get high..."
RN: "A person does not drink to get drunk."
AL: "That's right."
RN: "A person drinks to have fun."

I heard you on NPR's "What I believe" series , talking about your hopes and dreams concerning computers and other very important issues facing today's world. I too share your love of computers and have always thought they were the greatest invention of my lifetime. I even taught myself programming and published a little known program called "Cyber Print" for Atari in 1988 just before they went out of business. Don't worry, I now own a PC and find it to be perfect for my needs.

Who could image a machine that could not only allow somebody to compose and orchestrate their own musical score, create incredible works of art, or think of virtually any question that popped into their mind and actually have the answer in the time it takes to boot up their PC and hop on the internet. Wow!

Many years ago I was with some friends, and the subject of computers came up. Somebody I had never met said something that seemed so stupid to me at the time, that for a moment, had put me in a state of rage! He said that computers were the "appliance from hell". I was speechless that somebody could say something so ignorant and literally could not think of a thing to say.

Today, I feel he may have been right! Whether you are a conspiracy nut or not these days, nobody can argue that computers, intentionally or not, are keeping us from knowing our votes are being counted at the polls. Something so horrifying that apparently, people don't want to believe it. This news is traveling slowly to say the least. Not from any lack of notification on my part though. Just ask anybody at the local news hotlines or members of the Voting Equipment Selection Commitee here.

I walked the streets and collected hundreds of signatures for a group of local activists in Utah last year soliciting for paper ballots. I even got to speak at a local rally for my efforts and told of my ease at gathering signatures from both sides of this 21st century political divide we find ourselves in. Although I didn't ask, I assumed most of people I talked to must have been republican. Almost all of these people did not know that these machines were secretly programmed, but nearly everybody I talked to signed up immediately and were very appreciative that somebody was trying to fix this obvious problem.

Despite all my, and many others efforts and money, local officials elected to buy an unverifiable system for the 2006 midterm elections. I also understand the democrats aren't planning to organize an exit poll this year. Maybe they are too busy getting one together for the next Kiev race! We all know how goofy those Russian elections can get!

This is where I hope you might come in. Although I don't think it takes any great knowledge of computers to understand this problem, I'll bet your thoughts on this disturbing matter would promote our cause faster then any thousand computer scientists. And I'll bet those same scientists would be very happy to get back to their regular day jobs, and leave the task of producing verifiable voting procedures to competent professionals who get paid for that sort of thing!

I'm sure that your great American success story could only be enhanced by your bravery to come out against any corporation that would sell, or polling officials that would buy, a machine designed to count votes, without providing complete transparency. Some things are just too important to get all mixed up in a legal conundrum. In other words, they tell us we are lucky to live in the greatest democracy in the world, and I'm just asking for the right to have my ONE vote registered AND counted on election day.